August Aichhorn Research Articles

Psychoanalysis at Hawkspur Camp and Other Therapeutic Communities for Antisocial Children and Young People

Psychoanalytically informed therapeutic communities constitute an important, but often forgotten, chapter in the history of applied psychoanalysis. Apart from the original experiments by analysts and educators such as August Aichhorn or Homer Lane, little is known about the vibrant and socially progressive nature of residential communities established during and in the aftermath of the Second World War. This article explores the uses of psychoanalysis in four such communities that worked with antisocial children and young people: the Hawkspur Camp, established in 1936 by David Wills and Marjorie Franklin; the Barns Hostel, a hostel for ‘unmanageable’ child evacuees from Edinburgh and Glasgow, active during the Second World War; the Reynolds House, a residential home for boys leaving approved schools who had no home to return to, started in London in 1963; and the Cotswold Community, a residential school for ‘maladjusted’ children in Wiltshire, transformed into a therapeutic community in 1967. Apart from the modifications of psychoanalytic methods made necessary by this environment, a key question posed by these communities is what constitutes healing social relationships at large, and how psychoanalysis can be instrumental in building and maintaining them.

August Aichhorn educational centers for delinquent adolescents as an example successful extrapolation of psychoanalytic theory into the practice of social and pedagogical work

August Aichhorn educational centers for delinquent adolescents as an example successful extrapolation of psychoanalytic theory into the practice of social and pedagogical work The article is devoted to a topical and little-studied issue – the extrapolation of psychoanalytic theory into the practice of social and pedagogical work with delinquent teenagers on the example of the educational centers of the Austrian psychoanalyst and pedagogue August Aichhorn. The article examines the methodological foundations of A. Aichhorn’s pedagogical activity, shows the influence of S. Freud’s classical psychoanalysis, A. Adler’s individual psychology, and European reform pedagogy. The similarities and differences of his psychoanalytic pedagogy from representatives of European schools of “free education” and representatives of “humanistic pedagogy” are analyzed. The specifics of the work of A.Aichhorn and his colleagues with delinquent teenagers in the “Youth House” educational center are revealed, and the requirements for pedagogical staff are considered. The psychoanalytic concept of juvenile delinquency developed by A. Aichhorn, namely the concept of latent and overt child delinquency, is analyzed in detail, its causes and consequences, the main unconscious psychological motives that encourage illegal behavior are analyzed. The influence of the family on the formation of a delinquent personality is highlighted. Special attention is paid to modern psychoanalytic concepts of delinquency, namely: the psychoanalytic concept of internal regulation of behavior (W. Reckless), the concept of neutralization (in-depth analysis of the protective mechanisms of the psyche, which are the basis of delinquent motivation (G. Sykes and D. Matza), psychoanalytical concept of criminal behavior (J. Coleman). The psychoanalytical methods and techniques used in penitentiary practice on offenders (including juveniles) are explained. The importance of A. Aichhorn’s psychoanalytical pedagogy for modern pedagogical science is proved. The article analyzes the activities of the “August Aichhorn Center for Adolescent Residential Care” (New York, USA), which specializes in work with delinquent and antisocial children and adolescents.

Wissenschaftliche Diskurse, Kinder- und Jugendfürsorge, Heimerziehung: Wien im 20. Jahrhundert

The system of coercive education, organized by the welfare council of the city government, collaborated closely with psychiatrists, pediatricians and psychologists of University institutes, who developed diagnostic tools, defining the normal and the abnormal, the educable and the non-educable child. From the late 19th century onward, this was framed by the meta-discourse of racial hygiene (Rassenhygiene), by Rudolf Goldscheid’s concept of people economy (Menschenökonomie) and other theories. In contrast, ideas for a psychotherapeutic reeducation by August Aichhorn never rose to paradigmatic hegemony. During the Nazi regime, permanent “selection” and killing of “unworthy” children was organized by the public health and welfare system within the “children’s euthanasia” program. Potential victims were identified andselected by the Children Admittance Center (Kinderübernahmsstelle, KÜSt). Regular torturing children and youth in foster homes continued until the 1980s. After a minor rebellion of a leftist students’ group (“Spartacus”) against violent coercive education, the city authorities instigated internal reforms in 1971. Radical reform commenced in the late 1990s. KÜSt and foster homes were gradually replaced by intervention centers and flatshare communities. The article argues that a clandestine concept, called guilty neglect (schuldhafte Verwahrlosung) by the author, engendered mainly by psychiatrists during the 19th and early 20th century, is one of the main enabling factors for violent and painful treatment of children in foster homes and correction centers. This clandestine concept guided psychiatrists, psychologists, judges, police officers and pedagogues well into the 1980s, and thus contributed to the colonization of the poor and disadvantaged.

The Hietzing Years

ABSTRACTIn the field of psychoanalytic pedagogy of the late 1920s, Anna Freud and Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham were the pacesetters. They launched the Hietzing School during Vienna’s years of remarkable strides in social welfare, cultural innovation, and concurrently advancing fascism. Along with Erik H. Erikson, Peter Blos, August Aichhorn, and Eva Rosenfeld–among others–in a log cabin built in a suburban backyard, they crafted a new pedagogy for the modern child in the context of individual and group development. The small school led to further Freud–Burlingham endeavors, including the Jackson Nursery in Vienna, and the Hampstead War Nurseries and the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic in London. Arguably more valuable, however, are the many theories that emerged from the school: child analysis, psychoanalytic pedagogy, self-regulation, adolescent psychology, self and identity. Endearingly called the “Matchbox School” by its students and faculty, the Hietzing School closed in 1932, yet it left an outstanding institutional and conceptual legacy with which we are still working today.

Discussion of Ron Bodansky’s Case Presentation: How We Explain Psychoanalytic Improvement in Patients Who Have Been Severely Traumatized

In this article, I discuss Ron Bodansky’s presentation (this issue), “Release from Developmental Arrest,” from a Viennese perspective. Vienna, Kohut’s birthplace, the town in which he spent his childhood and adolescence, where he studied and had his first analysis with August Aichhorn, was the place to establish the first Self Psychological Training Institute in Europe: the Vienna Circle for Psychoanalysis and Self Psychology, a state recognized Training Institute, founded in 1987.Which direction has Self Psychology been taking in Austria since then? We began with the exploration of self-structure, moved via empathy to a focus on selfobject experiences and then many of us joined in the appreciation of the importance of intersubjectivity theory. My discussion reflects this particular theoretical orientation, an orientation that makes the attempt to observe and understand both the ongoing process of mutual influence that is at the heart of intersubjectivity theory, as well as the self object needs and transferences that become mobilized in the patient within this process.

Residency as Identity Transformation: The Life Stages of the Homo medicalis.

O ur appreciation of human life cycles and stages is about 150 years old, contrasted with hundreds of thousands of years of human existence. We recognized that children were not small sinful adults, as the Victorians preferred to view them—not homunculi, but in a developmentally distinct phase in human growth. This was the beginning of understanding human development and distinct stages in a person’s life. Along came Freud, who further defined the stages of human life with the childhood developmental stages of oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital/ puberty and adolescence, followed by adulthood. The stages of child development were expanded by Freud’s daughter Anna, who essentially revealed the life of the mind of a child. Freudian pioneers like Peter Blos and August Aichhorn revealed that adolescence comprises many substages; they elucidated the concept of adolescent ‘‘acting out’’ through delinquency and that these rebellions are transient in many. Anna Freud felt that the stage turmoil of adolescence is so profound that one should be wary to render a diagnosis during this life cycle, for even psychotic symptoms could disappear. These important pioneers of the human psyche revealed the developmental stages and cycles of life and defined them by affective and cognitive milestones. The concept of life cycle, stage, milestones, and ongoing development was further pioneered by a student teacher in Anna Freud’s school for children. Erik Homburger Erikson, who as a developing and unemployed artist found employment there through his friend Peter Blos, discovered psychoanalytic adolescence. Erikson understood that life cycles do not end after adolescence and that distinct cycles with needs, goals, and crises continue until death. It is unclear to many in the field of life stage psychology when these stages begin and end, and adolescence until age 30 is not unusual. Also, each stage develops an identity that does not disappear completely when the next one begins. The structures of the prior stage can be changed, altered, sculpted, and carried wholly or piecemeal into the next cycle. This profoundly alters our view of the power of the life stage/cycle, for the effect of prior stages does not die or wither away but remains an active influence. How active these life stages are, their ultimate complexity, and their relevance to understanding the human psyche, behavior, cognition, and identity needs appreciation. This may help us better understand medical residency as a life-altering and identity-transforming period in a young person’s life. Residency is where young people with a medical degree actually assume the personality and identity of ‘‘doctor’’ in its first and perhaps final incarnation. However, this fact seems to be contested by many for a host of reasons. First, we divide and famously compartmentalize our lives into work, personal, family, civic, and community components that we view and respect as separate. Second, we struggle and bumble over what is legal reality versus what are social, psychological, and biological realities. The legal opinion on the status of teenagers and young adults in school, college, and residency, versus the learners’/trainees’ relationships to their teachers, bosses, and leaders, appropriately but confusingly protects young people by determining that teachers are not in loco parentis. This important legal precedent—established to protect the autonomy of susceptible youth and to avoid abuses— ultimately drove wedges and schisms into real and lifealtering influences by role models. Embracing the precedent, teachers refuse or demur the role of models and accept a distant relationship with trainees; for they are not the biological parents, though they are surely the trainees’ role models, with life-influencing and sustaining impact throughout their lives. This abrogation of strong bonding relationships was a relief to and a lesser emotional burden on teachers that allowed them less authority and blame within the lives of young people, with the concomitant diminished influence and likelihood of accusation or possibility of injury, trauma, or abuse to young developing identities. Another of the many wedges between trainees and teachers in medicine was Osler’s historically dominant yet contested essay Aequanimitas, in which Osler prescribed an emotional distance. The pre-Flexnerian and peri-Flexnerian eras were rampant with mysticism, magic, varieties of alchemy in the practice of medicine (including hysteria), and charismatic and uncontrolled emotionalism on the part of both patients and doctors. Osler’s Victorian and maledominant ideas of the time attempted to introduce the Jacob J. Steinberg, MD, is Professor in the department of Pathology at the Montefiore Medical Center of Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Drawing on Psychoanalytic Pedagogy: the Influence of August Aichhorn on the Psychotherapy of Adolescents

The authors locate August Aichhorn’s pioneering ideas about the psychodynamics and psychotherapy of adolescents in the context of psychoanalytic pedagogy in Europe in the 1920s and ′30s. Strongly influenced by Freud’s discoveries and theory, Aichhorn was himself a major influence on the work of Anna Freud and of many other child and adolescent psychoanalytic theoreticians, including Spitz, Mahler, Eissler, Erikson, and Blos. His technique drew heavily on the element of surprise and on the adolescent patient’s identification with the analyst, as well as on the use of humor and empathy in treatment. The authors utilize brief vignettes from Aichhorn’s descriptions of his practice to illustrate his unique clinical style.

The ‘Matchbox School’ (1927–1932): Anna Freud and the idea of a ‘psychoanalytically informed education’*

Of all the applications of psychoanalysis to various fields, perhaps none has been as important – or as fraught – as the application of psychoanalytic insights to education. This paper re-constructs some of the early debates around psychoanalysis and pedagogy that Anna Freud engaged with during the 1920s in Vienna, when the whole question of what education should be became a central issue for politicians, pedagogues and psychoanalysts alike. The paper focuses on the period leading up to the creation of the so-called ‘Matchbox School’, operating under Anna Freud's guidance between 1927 and 1932, and describes the influence of pioneers such as Seigfried Bernfeld and August Aichhorn. Compared to her more well-known work at the Hampstead War Nurseries during the Second World War, Anna Freud's involvement with this earlier educational experiment is relatively neglected. Yet one can argue that this short-lived project not only laid the foundation for much of Anna Freud's later work; it also had some far-reaching consequences, both for psychoanalysis and for the practice of progressive education.

August Aichhorn

Though August Aichhorn, in name, remains a significant figure in the history of psychoanalysis, his ideas have been all but abandoned in the modern clinical conception of the treatment of children and adolescents who act out. The current treatment of children and adolescents, so disturbed that their behavior demands treatment outside of their home environment, is currently rudderless and highly dependent on broad societal counter-transferential reactions to disturbed youth. We argue that not only does Aichhorn hold a distinguished position in the history of the treatment of youngsters, but that his ideas about the meaning of severely disruptive behavior as well as the techniques which align with those theories remain relevant and, if utilized, would improve the treatment of severely disturbed youth.

The Correspondence of Bruno Bettelheim and Rudolf Ekstein 1. Introduction

This paper provides the historical, cultural, and clinical context for the relationship between Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990) and Rudolf Ekstein (1912-2005). Both were Viennese-born and trained intellectuals who received doctorates in the human sciences from the University of Vienna in 1937. Both were deeply identified with lay analysis, emphasizing that for psychoanalysis to perpetuate itself it needed to promote serious and rigorous forms of research. Because Bettelheim was the better known of the two, this introduction focuses on Ekstein's family history, with special emphasis on his experience of loss and trauma and his capacity to recover from personal and educational obstacles. It argues that Ekstein was a representative product of Austro-Marxism in the period between the wars, embracing the ethical brand of democratic socialism and group solidarity that was integral to the theory and practice of Austrian Social Democracy. It discusses Ekstein's training with Moritz Schlick in philosophy and his immersion in the Vienna Circle of logical positivism. From Schlick, Ekstein evolved into a philosophical thinker who learned how to think his own thoughts. Ekstein joined the circle of psychoanalytic pedagogues who clustered around the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, under the tutelage of Willi Hoffer, August Aichhorn and, above all, Anna Freud. The clinical component of psychoanalysis emanated from his commitment to understanding the inner world of the child. Bettelheim and Ekstein first became aware of each other from reading the analytic literature and finally met in America in the 1950s. They shared a professional interest in conducting research and doing clinical work on severely disturbed children and adolescents, including those with psychotic, borderline and autistic diagnoses. They debated the value of milieu therapy versus psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy on such children. As their relationship evolved, the two collaborated and began a fascinating correspondence that gradually evolved into an intimate friendship. They both engaged in a polemic with Bernard Rimland, who was massively critical of their clinical work and a hostile critic of psychoanalytic approaches to the treatment of disturbed children. Rimland was an advocate of a neurological approach to mental illness, with an emphasis on biology and psychopharmacology. The 22 letters that constitute the Bettelheim-Ekstein exchange began with clinical concerns, including the varieties of solitude, isolation and countertransference disruptions that may trouble the psychoanalytic researcher and clinician in dealing with primitively disordered children. It moves to other issues, including mutual support during the Rimland Affair. As the two became more friendly, a pattern of good-natured competition and envy appeared. The two engaged in a heated exchange on the question of whether contemporary Vienna remained as anti-Semitic as it had been in their respective youths: Bettelheim, the concentration camp survivor, argued that nothing had changed and that most Austrians remained viscerally anti-Semitic; Ekstein, the Austro-Marxist, contended that one could not blame a generation born after World War II, holding that in his experience many Austrians had examined their consciences and held distinctly different options from their parents or grandparents. Toward the end of their correspondence, we encounter Ekstein's tender sensitivity to Bettelheim's descent into depression as a result of the death of his wife, Trude, leading eventually to recurrent episodes of suicidal ideation and plans for his own suicide. The letters testify to a unique friendship with a somewhat old-world quality.

The Mark of Cain: Psychoanalytic Insight and the Psychopath

J. REID MELOY, ED.: The Mark of Cain: Psychoanalytic Insight and the Psychopath. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, 2001, 368 pp., $55.00, ISBN 0-88163-310-0. This book needed to be published. In attempting to understand psychopathy, one cannot help but study psychoanalytic insights on the topic. Yet, modern research and texts tend to go in other directions. Moreover, even light reading within psychoanalytic concepts on the topic quickly brings the realization that some of the best concepts have been unduly brushed aside by newer ideas and the flow of time. In The Mark of Cain, Meloy, a well-known expert on the topic, attempts to provide a sweeping collection of psychoanalytic knowledge on psychopathy in one volume. Moreover, Meloy links the psychoanalytic knowledge to newer biological and developmental insights, and tries to summarize the contributions of the psychoanalysts in the context of what we have learned since. In large measure, Meloy succeeds in this daunting task. The book includes seminal contributions by Phyllis Greenacre, John Bowlby, Helene Deutsch, Wilhelm Reich, and August Aichhorn. D.W. Winnicott's and Otto Kernberg's writings also appear, although the selections chosen are not quite as illuminating as other work by these authors. The idea of illumination came to mind frequently in reading this book. I fear that Meloy chose a bit too much based on historical significance rather than illuminative value. The paper or chapter that introduces a pivotal concept is always important, but such writing is not always as powerful as later works that may use well-known concepts but bring them to fuller expression. Of course, Meloy could be criticized had he chosen only the most insightful writings and skipped some of the historical pieces. I certainly am not saying that the selections are boring. Almost all contain wisdom that is often forgotten in current treatises on psychopathy. As an example, I thought myself controversial when I discovered while in training that some psychopaths had neurotic traits, that some were ambivalent about their brazen behavior rather than guiltless as usually assumed. I've known for some time that the psychoanalysts had made my discovery decades before me, but Meloy's book offers several viewpoints on the reasons and limits of this ambivalence. Obviously, then, although I quibble with Meloy a bit about his selection, his book is nonetheless quite illuminating. Although it is well-known, I had not previously read Milton H. Miller's Time and the Character Disorder. This piece is a powerful reminder of the poetic character of some of the best of psychoanalytic writing. …

Psychoanalysis in Austria after 1933-34

Our essay focuses on major developments of the history of psychoanalysis during the fascist and National Socialist years in Austria and sheds light on the re-establishment of psychoanalysis after World War II. With the consolidation of National Socialism in Germany in 1933 and Austro-fascism in 1934, any psychoanalytical reflection that was critical of political and cultural trends was extinguished. Vienna - once again - became the center of the psychoanalytical movement in Central Europe, taking over the role Berlin had played during the twenties. But, during the Austro-fascist system, psychoanalysis was isolated from an important part of its public. Psychoanalysts reacted by adopting an attitude of political abstinence, accompanied by self-censorship, they concentrated on training and clinical work, or they went into exile. Austria's Anschluß to the National Socialist Third Reich led to the final destruction of psychoanalysis. Nearly all Viennese analysts were affected by the anti-Jewish measures of the National Socialists and almost all of them fled the country. During the war years, a small group of people under the leadership of August Aichhorn tried to continue psychoanalytic training. Its members refounded the Viennese Psychoanalytical Society in early 1946. But, scientific traditions were broken and tendencies of anti-enlightenment, especially clerical and catholic prejudices, had continued from the time of Austrofascism and Nationalsocialism. The last chapter of our essay summarizes the research topics and the main historiographical studies done in the field.

Embracing the impossible profession.

In a foreword to August Aichhorn’s book, Wayward Youth (1925), Freud characterized psychoanalysis as an “impossible profession,” a bon mot popularized by Janet Malcolm (1983) in a book of the same name. Malcolm glamorized Freudian orthodoxy (and slammed its critics) in ways that do her no credit, but the phrase itself is apt in more ways than one. Psychoanalysis is an “impossible” profession from several points of view. To begin with, there is constant debate between the natural science–based and hermeneutic and/or humanistic versions of psychoanalysis. Though it was not apparent at the outset, perhaps, this tension is now integral to, if not in some sense constitutive of the whole Freudian field, with the result that its epistemic foundations are shaky, if not downright suspect—and not only to outsiders, either. Another feature of the analytic field that causes interminable debate concerns the therapeutic, rather than the theoretical side of things. Leaving issues of “technique” to one side, what are the actual goals of analytic therapy? After all, technique is merely a means to an end, and unless we are clear on the ultimate objective that informs a specific procedure, we may waste our ingenuity splitting hairs, losing the proverbial forest for the trees. Though seldom addressed by practitioners, at least to my knowledge, there is a profound tension between what I term the “philosophic” and the “instrumental” (or pragmatic) versions of psychoanalytic therapy. The philosophic view stresses the “disillusioning” function of the analytic dialogue. According to this view, only when the person relinquishes his (or her) most cherished illusions is deeper self-knowledge possible. Self-knowledge, by this account, is valuable for its own sake, irrespective of the

Frontline reports: the August Aichhorn Center for Adolescent Residential Care.

Frontline reports: the August Aichhorn Center for Adolescent Residential Care.

Children in a Violent Society

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book Forum: CHILD PSYCHIATRYFull AccessChildren in a Violent SocietyALBERT J. SOLNIT, M.D., ALBERT J. SOLNITSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., New Haven, Conn.Published Online:1 Feb 2000AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail This is a timely, well-edited collection of essays reflecting the observations and studies of dedicated active researchers concerned with children in a violent society. It has the strengths and weaknesses of a multiauthored volume, but the strengths greatly outweigh the weaknesses. This book will serve as an essential reference for advancing studies focused on this painful, complex, and compelling area of human tragedy. Throughout there are productive efforts to explore interventions that can ameliorate grave consequences of violence to several generations of children, adolescents, and adults.In these seminal essays, the following recurring themes are vividly and persuasively presented:1. The culture of poverty attracts and magnifies violence. More important, these essays demonstrate that children in poverty who are exposed to violence do not have options that middle- and upper-class children have to cope with and to mitigate as well as to overcome the trauma caused by exposure to violence. As the editor states, “The environment, that is, the social and cultural context in which families live, can help either to promote or buffer violence” (p. 263).2. No one method or theory is sufficient or adequate to evaluate and provide a treatment rehabilitation plan for those children who are psychologically and emotionally damaged by violence. In that sense, we must remain as humble and curious about individual cases as August Aichhorn was in his 1925 classic Wayward Youth(1), while admiring and learning from the authors of this book about population-centered studies. Soon after Children in a Violent Society was published in 1997, Violence in American Schools(2) was published; the two volumes complement each other in the spectrum of perspectives they provide, from clinical to sociological.3. To a great extent, the evaluation and treatment of the individual child must be tailored to that unique child and his or her experiences, family, and neighborhood. As Jenkins and Bell state, “The issue is not to treat all violence-exposed children as if they will be devastated by the experience, but rather to approach each exposed child as one at-risk and one for whom there must be some attempt to establish his or her level of potential morbidity” (p. 27). As eloquently stated by Marans and Adelman, “When there is no one available to listen, children are alone with the distress and disorganization that so often follows their close encounters with interpersonal violence. On their own, attempts to recover from overwhelming fear, uncertainty, and helplessness may be at a very high price to children’s developmental potential as well as to the communities that have been unable to protect or support them” (p. 220).Moving from the individual child exposed to violence to the “culture of violence,” Garbarino and Kostelny state, “One of the conclusions we draw from our observations of children coping with chronic violence in the United States today [is that] children are capable of coping with one or two major risk factors in their lives. But when risk accumulates—as with the addition of a third, fourth and fifth risk factor—we see a precipitation of developmental damage, particularly relevant to understanding the impact of chronic community violence on inner-city children” (p. 34).As one reads this book, it is well to keep in mind that in the United States, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Education, and the Justice Department (3), there is a trend toward less violence in the schools and a decrease in violent crimes committed by children and teenagers. However, due to the shocking violence of these incidences, especially because of the availability and efficiency of the weapons employed, surveys indicate that children feel less safe in schools and adults are more fearful of adolescents.This book is a necessary and highly readable resource for those who are concerned with children in a violent society, especially if they wish to be aware of where we are and how far we have yet to travel in assuring that children receive the high priority they need and deserve.edited by Joy D. Osofsky, Ph.D. New York, Guilford Publications, 1997, 338 pp., $40.00; $19.95 (paper).

Aichhorn Revisited

August Aichhorn first published Wayward Youth in German in 1925. His willingness to approach a problem as difficult as delinquency in terms of psychoanalytic theory and to then test his theories with groups of delinquents in a reformatory setting were truly pioneering. Perhaps his greatest success as an educator was in attracting other psychoanalytic leaders, most notably Sigmund Freud and Kurt Eissler, to extol and extend his early efforts.The turn of the century seems a fitting time to revisit Aichhorn's views, to assess his impact on colleagues, and to place his contribution in the perspective of current research and practices.

Delinquency and Child Guidance: Selected Papers. August Aichhorn , Otto Fleischmann , Paul Kramer , Helen Ross

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsDelinquency and Child Guidance: Selected Papers. August Aichhorn , Otto Fleischmann , Paul Kramer , Helen Ross Irving KaufmanIrving Kaufman Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Social Service Review Volume 40, Number 4Dec., 1966 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/642009 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1966 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Book reviews

Delinquency and Child Guidance: Selected Papers. August Aichhorn. Edited by Otto Fleischmann, and others. (New York: International Universities Press, 1965. Pp. 244. $5.00.) Elementary School Organization and Administration, fourth edition. Henry J. Otto and David C. Sanders. (New York: Appleton‐Century‐Crofts, 1964. Pp. 409. $6.50.) The German Historical School in American Scholarship: A Study in the Transfer of Culture. Jurgen Herbst. (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1965. Pp. 262. $5.75.) Helping High School Students to Read Better. Will J. Massey and Virginia D. Moore. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965. Pp. 102. $1.95, paper.) Linguistics and English Grammar. Henry Allan Gleason, Jr. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965. Pp.519. $7.95.) Social Studies in Secondary Education. Jonathon C. McLendon. (New York: Macmillan, 1965. Pp. 556. $7.50.) The Wonderful World of Ellwood Patterson Cubberley: An Essay on the Historiography of American Education. Lawrence A. Cremin. (New York: Bureau of Publication, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1965. Pp. 81. 95¢, paper.) Writing and Literature in the Secondary School. Edward J. Gordon, editor. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965. Pp. 295. $3.95, paper.)

Delinquency and Child Guidance: Selected Papers by August Aichhorn Edited by Otto Fleischmann, Paul Kramer and Helen Ross

"Delinquency and Child Guidance: Selected Papers by August Aichhorn Edited by Otto Fleischmann, Paul Kramer and Helen Ross." International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 16(1), pp. 101–102

The therapeutic personality, as illustrated by Paul Federn and August Aichhorn.

This paper is the result of a casual remark made at a presentation of Paul Federn's ego psychology to the s:taff of Philadelphia State Hospital in .September :[956. The writer said then that Federn's personality may have contributed to his success in treating psychotic patients, while Freud's different personal approach to these patients might explain his pessimism about their treatability. I t is a fact that not a few of Freud's followers were surprised at how little Freud cared about treating people with severe mental illness and how very doubtful he was that they could be treated at all. He "did not exclude ''1 the po.ssibility that eventually a modified method would be fo.u~d f~or treating psychotics; yet when Federn and others, notably Hollos, asked for his active support of their efforts, he shielded himself behind old age and illness--for Freud, hardly real reasons. So.me of those close to him felt that he was always more interested in the research aspects of his work than in healing and helping. This attitude is also apparent in his writings. If one further considers that the result of mental illness is impairment of abstract thinkiag and flattening of individual qualities, it can easily be understood that psychotic patients hardly present the intellectual challenge of neurotics. Similarly, the dissocial person appears to be untrustworthy and a liar. Freud had no use for weak characters, anyway. Neither the delinquent nor the psychotic was the intellectually interesting patient whom Freud alone considered the o.nly worthwhile .candidate for analysis. But delinquency and psychoses are, .at least in Federn's opinion, diseases of want; those who suffer from them must receive mental nourishment before one can reason with them. One must compare Freud's attitude with Federn's unending devotion and even sacrifices for the treatment of psychotics--insignificant as their individual per,sonalities may have been--to give full weight to, the difference between Federn's a~d Freud;s views .on treatment of the psychoses. This, in short~ was the essential idea be-